Before bamboo, soy and coconut fibers, there was organic cotton. Arguably the most popular sustainable fabric available, organic cotton is grown without pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, all of which are used on conventional cotton crops. Organic cotton is used in T-shirts, diapers, sheets and more. But is it truly the better choice?

Critics of organic cotton rant about water resources needed to grow it, chemical dyes and the significant carbon footprint created to ship it. Proponents of organic cotton remind us of its reduced or nonexistent chemical usage and the smaller farms where it’s typically grown, and of the GMO (genetically modified organisms) seeds used to grow conventional cotton. We delve into the fact and fiction about organic cotton to give you an honest look at how sustainable this fiber really is.

1. Chemicals

Considered one of the most chemically dependent crops in the world, conventional cotton uses 10 percent of all agricultural chemicals and 25 percent of the world’s insecticides—in the U.S., one-third of a pound of chemicals are needed just to grow enough conventional cotton for a regular T-shirt. “Organic cotton is a solution to the problem of chemical use in conventional cotton,” says Lynda Grose of the Sustainable Cotton Project. Additionally, Grose says growing organic cotton is a great transition crop to convert chemical-intensive fields to a future organic farm, whether it’s for growing food or fabrics. “The ecological goal is to convert fields from chemical controls to biological controls.”

Organic cotton crops are kept healthy with a number of natural methods that help control weeds and pests. According to the Organic Consumers Association’s Clothes for a Change program, these methods include mechanical or hand-weeding, crop rotation, planting several crops together (intercropping), use of mulches, adjusting planting dates and densities of crops, and introducing beneficial predator insects.

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